"No ancient people have had a stranger history than the Jews. … [T]he history of no ancient people should be so valuable, if we could only recover it and understand it. … Stranger still, the ancient religion of the Jews survives, when all the religions of every ancient race of the pre-Christian world have disappeared. … Again it is strange that the living religions of the world all build on religious ideas derived from the Jews. … [T]he great matter is not “What happened?” but “Why did it happen?” Why does Judaism live?"